~ from OCTOBER 2004 ~
I am rushing to get something while on a fifteen-minute break from work. The day is gray and my car is dirty. Turning right onto Route 9W, I can see there is a hold-up ahead. The cars are swerving around something in the road – a broken bottle, a pot-hole, some bit of wreckage I imagine – and then I see a squirrel there. Slowing, I can make out that the back half of the animal is flattened. Someone had run him over, only his head, front two feet, and upper body are still intact, still alive. It is grotesque and cartoonish. There is panic in his jittery movements. He hops forward and to the side, but the rest of his body won’t follow. He tries so hard to get out of the road as cars rush by.
I realize too late that I should run him over. There is no time to process this. I swerve at the last moment, hoping to crush his skull and brain. I don’t think I hit him. I am down the road in front of other cars. There is no way to put the car in reverse and back over the animal. I hope someone will see it and run it over, end the misery. The helplessness is terrifying and I begin to cry.
Why am I crying?
Dead squirrels are everywhere, their red and gray carcasses line the roads, mounds of dusty, flattened fur dot the streets. Their stomachs have been ripped open, innards splattered and organs trampled beneath blind tires. The blood has turned dark, drying on a hot day or trickling away in a storm. Sometimes their heads are intact, with eyes squinting as thought in pain or fitful sleep, or stunned and wide, the pressure of a car tire or truck bulging them open. We think nothing of it. The world is cruel that way.
This squirrel was struggling to get out of the road, to drag its useless body somewhere else, drive by survival or hope, and who can tell which.
On my way back the squirrel is gone.
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